IN THE BLOOD
The new grindhouse car show powered by blood
A car runs on human blood in new grindhouse show Blood Drive.
TWISTED ROAD TRIP
1It’s time to buckle up. Newbie TV series
Blood Drive finds police officer Arthur Bailey (Alan Ritchson) forced to partner with the deadly Grace D’Argento (Christina Ochoa) for a warped car race, where vehicles run on human blood instead of petrol. They must then traverse an apocalyptic landscape to win one million dollars, and stop their heads exploding from nanotechnology implanted in their necks.
“Our idea was to take this boy scout and see how far we can change him,” creator and co-executive producer James Roland tells Red Alert. “A femme fatale and a good-boy cop are really interesting for one episode. You then have to start digging into that and start shaping it into something else.”
IT’S A BIT RACY
2In order to override the explosive technology, Arthur and Grace must produce extreme amounts of adrenaline. Cue sex in the backseat of a speeding car as it – and Arthur – barrel towards a climactic finish. “We wanted to get everything out of the way,” says Roland. “There’s so many stories where the couple is about ‘will they or won’t they?’ So, for us, it was like, ‘Let’s do the opposite. Let’s have them screw in the most-crazed place possible in the pilot and take sex off the table.’”
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
3Blood Drive’s opening sequence sees Grace spearing a guy’s family jewels, and feeding him to her car. Cheerleaders get hacked up. A seedy diner minces up patrons for hamburger meat. In other words, this series delivers plenty of gore. “A lot of the violence we have in the show leans towards that ‘Holy shit. I can’t believe that happened,’ funny kind of stuff,” Roland says. “Any deaths with a main character, we toned down. We pulled back from the gore completely. No entrails or details – just a little blood splatter.”
IT’S GRINDHOUSE fOR TV
4Roland cites Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s double feature, Planet Terror and Death Proof, as inspiration for Blood Drive’s grindhouse element. However, don’t expect any nostalgic fake cigarette burns or the film burning out in the middle of a sex scene. “We tried to tap into the spirit of what grindhouse films were,” Roland explains. “That includes moving as fast as you can and being as brash as you can. No boring parts. Whenever you go to do a scene you think you’ve seen before, how can you spin it? How can you constantly surprise the audience?”
THE ROAD RAGE COULD GO ON
5If Blood Drive hits the pavement for additional adventures, subsequent seasons will be treated like movie sequels. “Characters and story elements will cross over from season to season,” Roland says. “What the season is about and what it feels like will be largely different. It’s going to be gory and just as entertaining, but in terms of the race, that’s going to drastically change. Each season will not be a race to another location.”
Blood Drive comes to Syfy in the US on 14 June.